Africa-Press – Eswatini. The launch of the Eswatini Country Partnership Framework (CPF) almost turned into a political dialogue.
This was when the three Cabinet ministers had to defend government from a submission that was made by CANGO Executive Director Thembinkosi Dlamini. The three Cabinet ministers who included the Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Dr Tambo Gina, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade, Manqoba Khumalo and Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, defended government with every fibre of their being. This was during the launch of the World Bank Group (WBG) Eswatini CPF for the fiscal years 2024-2028. The CPF was launched by the Prime Minister, Cleopas Dlamini, yesterday at Hilton Garden Inn.
The PM highlighted during the launch, that the CPF was focused on supporting Eswatini’s transition from a public sector-driven growth model to a private sector-led approach. The CPF emphasises on the resilient economic growth, that is job creation, while also emphasising on human capital development. It is is aligned with the National Development Programme (NDP). It further stresses a lot of focus on addressing the challenges of lagging regions such as Lubombo and Shiselweni, addressing issues of provision of basic services, such as water and electricity.
Attended
The launch was attended by private sector players, senior government officials, development partners and the civil society that included the World Bank Country Director in Eswatini, Botswana, Lesotho Namibia and South Africa, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly; United Nations Resident Coordinator George Wachira; Coordinating Assembly of Non-Governmental Organisations (CANGO) Executive Director Dlamini, among others. After the official launch, there was a panel discussion on the implementation of the CPF for maximum impact, which was moderated by Ikechi Okorie, Resident Representative, World Bank Eswatini. The panellists included Ministers Khumalo, Rijkenberg, UN’s Wachira, CANGO’s Dlamini and World Bank BELNASA Youth Forum Secretary for Eswatini, Buyelani Msweli. Okorie put the CANGO director on the spotlight and asked him how non-governmental organisation (NGOs) would need support to ensure increased social accountability. The director noted that from the time he started looking at the CPF and the discussions in the room, he felt that there were missing components. Dlamini stated that the CPF spoke a lot on government and inclusion of the private sector, but was very quiet on the inclusion of civil society.
Lack
“It is clear that the CPF is talking about institutional weaknesses problem with government’s lack of voice accountability and transparency and all of those evils,” he said. Dlamini said he did not think that there was sufficient progress that was going to be made if they did not attended to the issues he listed, which delved on institutional witnesses. He noted that the CPF stated that the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was sitting at around US$4 000, which was equivalent to E71 000. He said looking at the situation, it was really not about the absence of productivity in the economy, but challenges in inequalities. He noted that Eswatini had been listed among the top 15 countries with the highest inequality gaps in the world.
“We are sitting with a problem of growing inequality in the country. While we have good programmes to confront poverty, if we do not address the problem of inequality in the country, we are not going to reach the underlying causes of poverty,” he said.
He added that the country had challenges of unequal power relations. Dlamini said those who were at the top made the policies in such a way that they facilitated their accumulation of wealth and increased incomes. He said such happened at the expense of the majority of the people who continued to be poorer. He said NGOs were involved in various community projects on the ground, but they didn’t feel that they had sufficient support from either government or development partners.“We have a situation where we say there is going to be a budget and implementation of numerous projects but we are not part of the process of formulating those projects and their sustainability. “As NGOs, we have the capacity but the support is not forthcoming, in terms of financial resources, technical capacity or just institutional frameworks that allow us to perform our functions without interference from government,” he said.
Dlamini went on to state that NGOs, from time to time, had challenges where government tried to constrain the environment in which they worked, in terms of the ability to freely express themselves, and pursue their development projects. This was also prevalent when they sought to encourage participation of citizens in policy formulation, among other things.
Submission
While the director was making his submission, Minister Gina, couldn’t sit still on his chair, as the CPF was under his portfolio. The minister was eager to respond to Dlamini, to the surprise of everyone in the room, while the other two ministers were also reacting in disagreement with Dlamini. Before the entire house could react to Dlamini’s submission with the clapping of hands, Gina was on the podium. “I’m surprised that distinguished panellists said so may useful things but there was no clapping of hands for them and then one individual comes from the forest and you clap,” he said, while laughing. Gina stated that inequality was not properly understood. He said a country growing fast like Eswatini was bound to have an inequality gap, hence the figures in the country were worse from 2017 to date. He explained that there were people who were investing and getting more businesses and, therefore, during that process inequality was bound to increase. “However, it is highly desirable that we take people out of extreme poverty,” he said.
Surprised
The minister added that he was a little surprised about Dlamini’s point on lack of participation. He said Eswatini was probably one of the most participatory societies he could think of. The minister said there were many forms of participation. He highlighted the recent Sibaya, which was summoned by His Majesty King Mswati III. “I don’t know any other country where everybody is free to go to a forum and decide which direction the country should take, instead of a few elite decide what to do. In our country, the Constitution we have, the election of MPs, among other things, came from Sibaya through public participation,” he said. While he was responding to the panellist, there were murmurs until he noted that some people were obviously disagreeing with him.
Surprised
He added that he was surprised to learn from Dlamini that government supressed participation and freedom of expression. He said everyone in the country could say whatever they wanted to say, choose their government and everybody was free to stand for elections. He even made a joke about anyone who would come to Lubuli Inkhundla not to dare run for elections because he would defeat them.
Source: times
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